The present invention relates to online advertising and, in particular, to techniques for selecting advertisements for display in online web pages.
Online Advertising relates to the promoting of products and services using the Internet and World Wide Web. Typical online advertisement types include banner ads, floating ads, pop-up ads, and video ads, which are provided through a browser to the user's computer desktop. A large segment of online advertising is untargeted. Typically, online advertisement strategy involves placing an advertisement on the computer desktop of as many computer users as possible, in the hopes that at least a few computer users will be interested. Such untargeted advertising tends to be inefficient, and may be annoying to many computer users whose computer desktop may seem cluttered with undesired ads or ads, which are uninteresting to the user.
“Contextual advertising” refers to a form of Internet advertising/marketing where advertisements are selected and served by automated systems based on content of the web page the user is viewing. For example, a contextual advertisement selection system may scan the text of a web page for keywords, and select advertisements based on any keywords located in the text. When the web page is displayed for the user, a contextual advertisement selection system provides the selected advertisements for display on the web page.
Regardless of the specific online advertisement type, providers of online advertising services face considerable challenges that relate to the increasing tendency of users to ignore advertisement content. A provider typically strives to achieve a balance between presenting advertisements which are sufficiently eye-catching to result in revenue, but which are not so intrusive that they negatively impact user experience. For example, a contextual advertisement methodology may result in inappropriate advertisements being inadvertently placed with respect to content, such as an airline advertisement that is selected for display with a news article about an airplane crash